Fig. 4

Famine exposure during the first 1000 days of life, disruption of keystone taxa, and type 2 diabetes. Left: association of early-life famine exposure with keystone taxa index. Keystone taxa index was constructed with the total abundance of the keystone taxa that were consistently detected in the three cohorts. Linear regression was used to estimate the difference in keystone taxa index between other groups and reference group, with adjustment of age, sex, BMI, and the use of hypoglycemic and hypolipidemic medications (yes/no for each). Here, we highlighted the comparation between the first 1000 days famine exposure and the control group in the three cohorts. Other results were present in the supplemental materials. Right: the associations of keystone taxa index (per SD unit) with type 2 diabetes using logistic regression in the three cohorts, adjusted for age, sex, and BMI. We combined the effect estimates from the three cohorts using random-effects meta-analysis